Harry Potter and the Cuckoo’s Calling

J.K. Rowling published a book under a pseudonym (Robert Galbraith) back in April, and it was doing reasonably well and getting rave reviews.

Then, just a short time ago, She revealed herself as the author (the lesson here — don’t trust ol’ J.K. with your secrets, darlings — she couldn’t manage to keep this one for three months!) and the book immediately sold out.

One can only speculate how many more zillions of copies she’d sell if she changed the title of the book to “Harry Potter and the Cuckoo’s Calling.”

In the spirit of this reveal, I have decided to unmask, and let all you faithful readers that I am really, in fact, Kim Kardashian.***

*** This may or may not be entirely 100% misleading, depending on whether you subscribe to Einstein’s Unified field theory or the philosophies of Tyler Durden, in which case I cannot state with any degree of certainty that it would or wouldn’t be inaccurate to assume that I couldn’t exactly not say that it is or isn’t almost partially true.

Yes, that was my take as well — if it had come out from another source, I would have been more understanding — but there’s a reason I write under a pseudonym — I want people to read and enjoy this entirely without pre-conceived notions of who is writing it. Let the writing stand on its own. She doesn’t need the money — is she really that much of a narcissist?

I read that the book got good reviews but had only sold 1,500 copies in the UK – not the standard publishing definition of ‘doing well.’ (Given that one of my friends sold 8,000 copies of her book, and her agent dropped her.)

Is that an indictment of the general populace’s fickleness and desire for books of a certain kind, or on her writing, or on her publicist? It’s an interesting observation on the fact that it’s not necessarily quality that sells.

I read about this. The article said that Rowling’s lawyer’s wife’s best friend let the cat out of the bag (if you can follow that rumor mill). Rowling was reportedly pissed off that someone she had never heard of knew the information when her closest friends and relatives didn’t know. I think it was a publicity stunt. Nice to know that authors are cool enough to do their own stunt work.